Cute lit'l Pixies!

Look at these two cute lit'l pixie girls!

These two girls are so giving and loving, and brave too! They cut their hair off and donated it to locks of love. I love that they chose to do this. I did it back in April when I cut off 11 inches and they wanted to do it too. Well we waited, and waited, and waited, until finally we had 10 1/2 inches to give. It's a little shorter than I thought it was going to be, but they couldn't be happier. I mean look at those smiles. With their hair out of their face you can really see how much they look like their brothers. Laney looks so much like Christian, and Kaleigh looks so much like Logan. Funny, how kids pair up in families and look like siblings. We have Alexis and Noah, Kaleigh and Logan, Laney and Christian, and well Bella looks like Kaleigh and Logan.

Anywho, I'm so proud of these two girls and I am proud to be their mom. They give so much and LOVE doing so! These girls are going to make awesome adults and they bring so much to our lives. I love them tons and hope they always remember others and serve one another always! They did this out of love and remembrance for their brother and I know that our family's tragedy has made them(and all of us for that matter)stronger and more aware of others' needs. They have a greater love for family togetherness and serving others than anyone I know. It has given our family a different perspective on life and made us all value each other a little more everyday.

A Release Party and Have your Cake and Eat it Too!

Calling Bishop D. George Hansen

We thank you for your service and you are now officially

RELEASED!

My lovely FIL was released this past Sunday after a long, dedicated 5 years of serving as a bishop in the hubs' childhood ward. Coincidentally, my FIL's childhood ward as well. They both grew up in the same house, same neighborhood, same schools, same major, same career. Hmmm, I wonder if the hubs will follow his dad's steps and be called as a bishop some day. He says ABSOLUTELY NOT, but I say, you never know.

Anywho, the family had a dinner/party-it's what my kiddos called it, and I made this beauty for the dessert...
It's a red velvet cake with raspberry buttercream frosting covered with chocolate-covered strawberries on top. It tastes as good as it looks, trust me! I know this not only because I had some, but everyone liked it. My MIL even liked it, so much that she took a 2nd piece before we left, so she could have it later. She hardly ever does this, she's not into the sweets much(I need to be that way a lot more, but alas, I like my treats). I love to bake and love it even more when I can share at family functions. I get better every time I make something(the hub's words, not mine)and this will help me in the future when I open up my dream bakery/cafe. I like to try new things and this beauty was my first attempt at making a "pretty" cake as well as tasty one.

I've been a BUSY lit'l bee!

I love the feeling of accomplishment! I love de-stressing! I love seeing my kids' smiling little faces when I complete something for them! I have been able to do this all this week. I've been busy with some small crafting projects for my kiddos. I have loved it so much that for Christmas I'll be doing almost all of their presents. Here's some of the projects I have done this week...

We got these stickers for free in the mail and the magnets are off the phone book-also free. I put the stickers on the magnets and then cut them out into...

These! The boys love playing with them on the fridge while I make dinner. I love them, because I'm not tripping over the boys and their toys while I make dinner.
Gotta love a new, FREE, toy!

I also made another trip to the dollar store and bought a wreath form, and some curly ribbon bows and made this...
Isn't she lovely? I saw one like this in a store for around $25 and thought, "I could so make that," and so I did. Mine, however, only cost me $8 for the whole thing.

I have also made some more bows and hairbands for Kaleigh and Laney. This one is a felt pom-pom bow that can interchange on different headbands. She loves it! Making these things inspired a present for Christmas, but I can't show it yet-they sometimes look at the family blog. I have had some really stressful days as of late, so all the crafting has brought me down a bit. Good thing, the hubs is stressed out himself, so someone has to have their head on right to run the house.

Some of the fabric flowers I made and put on headbands. The girls have been in need of some cute, girly, hair accessories due to their new hair(more on that later). I love these flowers, they are the no-sew kind. Just a hot glue gun and scissors. Gotta love me some easy crafting!

One of thee cutest headbands! I just sewed on some buttons to an elastic headband to spice it up a bit. The girls again love it and want all kinds of different ones. Good thing I have lots of buttons in my craft supplies. I don't think I'll ever buy another hair accessorie again, I'm having way too much fun making my own. So that's just a snipit of what I've been up to lately, plus school starting for the girls, new haircuts, boys going to the dino museum with cousins, making 4 batches of jam, making all kinds of bread, and oh yeah, keeping the house running! Busy, busy, busy lit'l bee I've been!

Floats, Bella, and the 24th of July!

Our last week of our summer fun was filled with tons of outings and one of our events-checking out the floats for Pioneer Day! We love doing this every year, but this one we had a bigger reason to check them out. Our stake made a float(we didn't know about it until it was done, no announcement made to us)so we wanted to see it. The kids got to even push the remote to make the bunnies pop up and eat the carrots. The theme this year was "then and now." Here are the kids at the front of the float...

The backside of the float

The front side again. It had a cow on top making moo noises and shaking its cowbell.


I also tried to get some pics of Bella standing and "trying" to take a step, but she wasn't having it. Instead I got this cute pic of the way she sits when she is playing with one of her MOST favorite peeps. Look at her legs. She just thinks she's a big kid now-minus the fact she is STILL nursing and WILL NOT even try walking. Oh well though, at least I get to enjoy her babyness a little longer.

Love, love, love the way she sits.

She won't actually ride or walk with her little car, but she sat on it and flashed a big ol' grin to Logan(her favorite lit'l peep).

I just love my little bunch of munchkins. Today was the first day of school and I miss my older girls and can't help but feel sad that one day soon this lit'l munchkin will join the fleet of the school children. I better enjoy her tons and tons, 'cause the time flies fast around here and it will seem like just yesterday that she was born. I know this all too well, because my oldest has started her last year of elementary school-YIKES! Oh man, time is just zoomin' past me.

JELL-O FIGHT!!!

Have I mentioned how much I looovvve our Thanksgiving Point membership? Well, I do, and we have had another fun, family night outing down there. We went and had our FHE fun at the gardens. It was a BIG, FUN, RED, JELL-O FIGHT! We met up with our lovely family friends the Stones, and everyone had a blast. It's great getting together with them because everyone has a friend to play with including the hubs and me, haha =).All the kids after their sticky, messy, fun!
Laney posing, but giving Scott a weird look. Silly monkey girl!

Lookin for more jell-o. It went fast and flyin' through the air.

Noah finding all kinds on the ground, to then come running full throttle towards Liz.

Logan was having a blast at getting mom. Crazy boy, but sooooo funny! Yep, I got dragged into the big, sticky, mess. It was fun, however, not so much to the hubs. He hung back with Bella the whole fight. He was disgusted with the sticky mess, which as he says is funny with him being the mess-maker, unorganized one of us, and me being the neat/organized one.

Kaleigh's back side after she slipped on jell-o and got pelted with a bunch of jell-o. I think she had the most fun of all of us, but then that's Kaleigh for ya.

After the sticky, messy fight they turned on the sprinklers and well... all the kiddos got themselves soaked. Mental note: next time bring towels. This was all the kids laying in the sun that was left, so they could dry off. They all look like such good friends. We definitely do enjoy meeting up with the Stones. Good friends, good times, and a GREAT FHE once again.

Crafts and Girls' Night fun!

I finally, I mean we finally got a night just us gals. The hubs took the boys up to the family cabin for a fathers and sons night and that left us girls to have some fun. I don't get much time with just the older girls due to the boys always wanting in on our fun, so it was nice to be able to get the paints out and have some undistracted, creative, fun. I kept to the true nature of a girl night with junk food, movies, rootbeer and some crafty fun. When I was younger our girl nights included eating just tons of junk food for dinner while watching a movie and gabbing, so that's exactly what we did. I rented Tooth Fairy, the girls have wanted to see it for awhile, and we had nachos, candy, rootbeer, and some rice krispie treats we made earlier. They wanted popcorn and ice cream too, but that was just too much for me to handle. I didn't want our night and morning of fun to end with tummy aches so I held back a bit. I picked up these unpainted, cute bird houses at the dollar store( I just loooovvve that place)and we went to paintin' up a storm.

Just look at how cute they came out...

Laney, Kaleigh, me, Alexis
The backside of them
A blast was had by all and the girls want to do it again soon, now I just need to figure out a way to kick the boys out again. I must admit, eventhough we had Bella, it was way fun and calm in the house. I enjoy the calm for a little while but about 9 in the morning I was missing my boys a ton! They may be loud and crazy, but I couldn't live life without them.


I have been busy doing all kinds of little crafts to keep my stress level down and thought I give you a peek at some. My kids love to take my pens and they never seem to make it back to the pen storage, so I made some of these...
Super easy and now they don't run off with my pens, or at least they get put back in their new homes. It helps to make them look dressed up, it's too hard to hide them now.

Here's their new storage home

I have also been learning to make some hairbows for my girls. These ones are super easy and because I'm falling in love making stuff, I've decided to make Christmas this year. I have a ton of cute ideas for all the kids, but will probably need to start soon given there are 6 kids to make stuff for.

I got this 6 pack of ribbon in the dollar section at Target last Christmas and it has been sitting in my closet ever since. Enter in the thought to make a hair bow. I just cut each ribbon in half which game me 12 pieces. I just glued the strips in circles, yep that's just using my hot glue gun(my new lover, haha).


Then I just hot glued them in the middle making figure 8s. Now if you do this, I suggest using very little glue or you'll end up with a big gluey(is that a word?)mess.

Then just glue three of the strips(each different one)in a criss cross and do the same with the other three.

Then I just glued them together, again criss crossing the two bows, so it looks like this...

I am going to get a cute button and put it in the center of the bow, I just haven't had the time to get to HobLob yet-ya know 6 kids keep me busy and all. And I found out a tip about alligator clips,which this beauty will be going on. You can get 80 of them at Sally's Beauty Supply center for like $5. SCORE! SWEET! So that means I can make tons of cute bows for all of my girls for Christmas, well at least 3 of them, the oldest would so NOT love that! I tallied the cost and I made 2 bows(the other ones not pictured)for only $1.14, that's WAAAYYY less than buying one at Kid to Kid-which is usually $3-$5. Yee-haw, won't be buying bows anymore! I love making stuff! The joy and satisfaction I get is SWEET! I think I need to start a crafting club that meets once a month and we can all do a craft and teach everyone how to do them. Sounds so good, I just may have to do it.

July 4th Fun And This is the Place Park

We had a busy 1st week the kids were out of school. The first weekend was the 4th of July and we had to do a ton of fun stuff. We went down to T.P. on Saturday, on Sunday we made some tasty treats for the day and for Monday(we were gonna spend it with my dad at the pool). We made a yummy strawberry/raspberry poke cake. Very easy, and very delicious.Top of the cake
Inside of the cake.
It's just a white cake mix baked with some raspberry extract. We let it cool and then we made raspberry jello using 1 cup less water then the box calls for(big box of jell-o) and poked holes in the cake. We then poured the jell-o all over and let it set up in the fridge for a couple of hours. We then mixed some more raspberry extract in with a whole container of cool whip and frosted our cake. We garnished with strawberry stripes. Now, a lot of people do blueberries to make a flag, we didn't because my munchkins don't like to eat blueberries unless they are in muffins or pancakes.



We made these yummy, fruity cookies to take with us for our BBQ with my dad on Monday. These too were made from cake mixes and jell-o. I used 2 boxes of white cake mix(1 for each color), 2 eggs, 1 c melted butter, 2 Tbsp. of water, and one box of raspberry jell-o and 1 box of blue raspberry jell-o. I mixed the cake mix, one egg, 1/2 c of melted butter, and 1 Tbsp. of water with one of the jell-o. Then did the exact same thing for the other color. I had one red mix and one blue mix. I also added a little more color to them using gel color. I rolled them into balls and baked the cookies for 8 minutes at 350 degrees. I then just frosted the blue cookies and stuck the red ones on to make a sandwich. I then melted a bag of white chocolate chips and added a tsp. of shortening and decorated the cookies. We sprinkled them with red sprinkles, and VOILA... festive cookies for our celebration.
They were gobbled up by everyone after a day of swimming and BBQing.

The blue side, I didn't add enough blue to make them really pop, but they were still so cute and YUMMY!

We spent last Friday up at This is the Place State Park on their Family Fun Day. Admission was free and they had a bunch of activities going on. The kids did laundry, beat blankets to get the dust out, watered the garden, and learned a new game. We ended our fun with a "train" ride and a free Popsicle(which was much enjoyed due to the heat). It was very busy, like crazy busy, and Logan was extremely tired and had a HUGE meltdown. So, we left early and missed the square dancing and crafts, but we still had tons of fun. Even the big kid, the hubs, had a blast.

A beating the blankets

The new game the kids learned

The hubs teaching the munchkins how to keep their hoop up and rollin

Poor Laney got her hoop going so fast she started running after it to "catch" it and fell and skinned both knees up, again. Her lit'l knees were just startin to heal from her falling and skinning them up the week before, but alas, the girl is so active her knees take a toll.

Kaleigh excited that she finally got it to work

Such a precious lit'l munchkin

Pure joy and excitement from riding the "train." It was just a bunch of cars that were made to look like a train, but the boys LOVED it.

Logan so in love with being on a train he has hit his "high." Really, this pic does look like he is doped up, but his excitement just hit the roof, plus this was right after his HUGE meltdown. The train wasn't coming fast enough for him, but once it did he was in heaven. Our family had an eventful week and we have just kept on going. We've been busy this last week too and have so many plans next week that I will sigh with relief when the girls go back to school on the 26th, I'm pooped, but havin' a blast being so. We love to be busy when it's pure fun we're having.

Family trip to the gardens(and this time we saw it all)

We decided to go down to the gardens over the 4th of July weekend on Saturday. It was such a nice day, the temp while we were there was only 66 degrees-soooo nice. We didn't get a chance to see everything the last time we went, but this time I think we finally managed to see it ALL! We spent a good 2 1/2 hours down there and we all had fun. This is the rose garden with the cute munchkins posin' again-love Laney's foot in this pic, it about sums up that cutie-pie.
The munchkins are in love with the fish. We have to see them everytime we go down there.

We found the Secret Garden, love it, it's so peaceful and pretty. It smells really good walking through the honeysuckle when entering the garden.

This lit'l gal has me in love. She makes me smile and giggle all the time, and the kids adore her. She had so much fun squealing in delight the whole time.

I love waterfalls! The kids love them too, but only because this one has a huge hill next to it that they run, roll, chase, and yes FALL, down. They love it and no one ever cries, just laughter here. I absolutely love Thanksgiving Point! It's our family's go-to fun spot.

So, I thought we had seen everything, until...

we saw this guy. Logan screamed and said, "Mom, a moose, he's gonna be my friend and take me for a ride." Gotta love the boy and his excitement and imagination. So, I guess we'll never be able to say, "we've seen it all," just because we keep finding new things there every time we make a trip out there. I love that I can just let my kids run wild, explore, and have a time-of-a-lifetime down there. It makes outings with them all that more fun.